Michael Morpurgo - Unforgettable Journeys - Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea, Running Wild and Dear Olly

A doctor came, the police came. More cars up and down the farm track that day than I’d seen in all my time at Cooper’s Station. They carried Wes out on a stretcher, a blanket covering him, and put him in the back of an ambulance. We stood there watching the ambulance until it disappeared in a cloud of its own dust. That was the last we ever saw of Wes Snarkey. To this day I don’t know where they buried him. The bushmen stayed all that day until dusk, gathered down by the creek, crouching there unmoving, their own kind of vigil.

Ida told us later how the doctors thought Wes had died. He’d broken his neck. She thought he must have been too weak to sit on the horse through the heat of the day, that he’d probably lost consciousness and fallen off. He wouldn’t have suffered, she said. It would all have been very quick. Questions were asked afterwards. Lots of official-looking people in suits and dog collars and hats came and went, in and out of the farmhouse. One or two even came over to inspect our dormitory block, and to watch us at work out on the farm. Not one of them ever talked to us. They just looked at us and made notes.

For us Wes’ death changed absolutely nothing, except that we had lost our hero, and without him felt more vulnerable than ever. Piggy Bacon strutted about the place as usual, as if nothing had happened. He mentioned Wes’ death only once, used it during one of his Sunday sermons. It was a favourite sermon of his, about the Ten Commandments. One Sunday he added this, to make his point: “I want you all to remember,” he said, “that the last thing that boy ever did was to steal a horse, my horse. And look what happened to him. It was his fault, no one else’s. He’s only got himself to blame. ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Disobey the Ten Commandments, and that’s what happens to you. Let it be a lesson to you, a lesson you’ll never forget.”

In the days and weeks after Wes died, we saw almost nothing of Ida. She’d bring us our food, but she’d never say anything, not a word. She’d never once look at us. We never saw her out on the farm either. She didn’t even appear at Piggy’s side any more at Sunday services. So we had to sing our hymns unaccompanied – no squeezy box to lead us, just Piggy Bacon’s trumpeting, tuneless voice. We did see her occasionally hanging out her washing on the line, and sometimes in the evening sitting alone out on the verandah of the farmhouse, her dog at her feet. But even then she seemed not to be noticing what was going on around her any more. If ever I spoke to her, she wouldn’t answer me. She’d simply stare straight ahead of her as if she hadn’t heard me at all. It was almost as if she was in a kind of trance. She must have been like it inside the house, too, because there were no more rows, and she played no more music on her squeezy box.

*

Ida chose a Sunday to do it. We were all standing out in the heat in front of the dormitory, Piggy up there in the shade of the verandah in his preacher’s black suit, clutching his Bible. We were singing What a friend we have in Jesus again.

We noticed her before he did. She was telling her dog to stay where he was. He sat down, then lay down, his head on his paws. She came down the steps of the farmhouse in her apron, striding purposefully towards us – not at all how she usually walked. And she was carrying a shotgun. Suddenly no one was singing any more. Ida was standing right beside me now, and she was pointing the shotgun, levelling it at Piggy Bacon’s chest.

“Children, go inside and collect your things,” she said, and she said it without once taking her eyes off Piggy Bacon’s face. “Quickly now, children. Quickly now.” We were rooted to the spot. Not one of us moved. But Piggy did. He made to come towards her, to step down off the verandah. Ida’s voice was ice-cold. “Don’t think I won’t use this if I have to,” she said. And then to us, “Hurry children. Bring everything you need. You won’t be coming back.”

“Have you gone mad, Ida?” Piggy was trying to bellow at her, but it came out more like a squeal of fury. “What are you doing?”

“I’m setting them free,” she told him, “that’s what I’m doing. And it’s true, I have been mad. All this, this building we put up, this orphanage, everything we’ve done, and done in the name of the Lord, too, has been a great madness. But I’m not mad any more. You don’t show God’s love to little children by hurting them, by working them till they drop, and certainly not by killing them. It’s over. I’m letting them go.”

We didn’t wait any more. We rushed up the steps past Piggy Bacon and into the dormitory. Jubilant at the completely unexpected turn of events, we threw all the clothes and belongings we had into our suitcases, and ran out again, eager not to miss the drama unfolding out there. I was leaping off the verandah steps, suitcase in hand, when I remembered my lucky key. There was no way I was going to leave it behind. I rushed back in again and climbed up on to my bed. I could just spot it deep inside the crack in the lintel, but I couldn’t get at it to hook it out – my nails just weren’t long enough. I don’t think I could have managed to retrieve it at all if Marty hadn’t come back to find me. He lent me his penknife and out it came, easily. I had my lucky key.

Back outside, Piggy Bacon was standing there, hovering between bewilderment and fury. Ida still had the shotgun aimed at him, her finger on the trigger. “Now children,” she said, “I want you all to stand way back, right back. Go on now.” We did as she told us. When I looked at her again she was holding the shotgun on Piggy with one hand, and with the other was taking something out of the pocket of her apron – it looked to me like a wet rag, nothing more. Piggy seemed to realise at once what she was doing, long before we did. He kept begging and begging her not to do it, but by now she was walking up the steps of the dormitory, sideways, keeping the gun pointing at him all the time.

“Stay where you are,” she warned him.

“Don’t do it, Ida,” he cried. “Please, you can’t.”

“Just watch me,” she replied coolly. That was when I caught a whiff of it. Diesel oil. And suddenly we all knew what she was going to do. “I’m going to burn this place to the ground,” she said, “so there’ll be nowhere for them to stay. Then you’ll have to let them go, won’t you?” And with that she disappeared into the dormitory. We saw her moments later through the window, lighting the rag with a match, saw the curtains catch fire. Then she was coming out, and there was smoke billowing out of the door behind her. She came down the steps and threw the shotgun down at Piggy’s feet.

“There,” she said. “It’s done.”

There was a frozen moment before Piggy Bacon moved. Then he bent and snatched up the shotgun. “It’s not loaded,” Ida said quietly. Piggy broke open the gun and looked. I’ve never ever seen a man snarl like Piggy did then. You could see the beast in his eyes as he charged up the steps into the dormitory. He tried first to beat the flames out with a blanket. We could hear him choking and spluttering inside. There was more smoke now, but already fewer flames. My heart sank. The curtains were on fire, but nothing else seemed to have caught. Piggy Bacon yanked off the curtains, cursing loudly.